Refugees flee camp with reports of Israeli abuses

An exodus was under way yesterday from the refugee camp that endured the bloodiest battle of Israel's military offensive, with Palestinians bearing horrifying accounts of a systematic campaign of destruction and abuse.

Hundreds of Palestinians fled the camp yesterday, an empty, smoking ruin resounding to bursts of Israeli machine gun fire. They left behind entire neighbourhoods flattened to make way for Israeli armour.

Some of the wrecking missions were launched while women and children were inside their homes. The operation began with rocketing from helicopter gunships and bulldozers moved in to finish the job.

They also told of the use of human shields for Israeli army patrols, and the random strafing of heavily populated civilian areas, killing elderly women and young boys and girls.

Those fleeing were dirty, exhausted and desperately hungry. Doctors in Jenin say 15 babies were sick after their mothers fed them powdered milk and sewage run-off from streets where bodies were left to rot for days.

A few also claimed to have witnessed a summary execution and the dumping of the dead - at least 150 Palestinians were killed in the camp by the Israeli army count - into mass graves.

The stories of executions and disposal of the dead could not be verified as the Israeli army has encircled the camp with tanks, and shot at, or arrested, journalists approaching the area. The Guardian was among a handful of newspapers whose reporters managed to enter the town yesterday.

But the accounts of the massive destruction of civilian homes, and of the firing on civilians, could be confirmed as they also occurred in the town of Jenin, suggesting a widespread and systematic pattern of human rights abuses that is only now beginning to emerge.

Ali Mustafa Abu Siria, 43, an Arabic teacher, was carried to hospital on a ladder - nursing a gunshot wound to the left knee that had gone untreated for four days. Doctors said it was badly infected.

He was injured while serving as a human shield for an Israeli army patrol, who led him out of his home handcuffed and at gunpoint on Friday. He was forced to walk ahead of the troops - and the army sniffer dogs - as they underwent the perilous business of house-to-house searches, hunting down Palestinian militants and weapons caches.

Mr Abu Siria was shot at the 12th house. "As soon as I knocked on the door, a bullet was fired at me, he said. He believes he was shot by a second Israeli army patrol, which was on the first floor of a neighbouring house. "The two groups of soldiers started screaming at each other," he said. "Then they left me. I started dragging myself on the ground until I reached the house of a neighbour. The army did not do anything for me."

A similar picture of a widespread disregard for civilian casualties by the Israeli army is also emerging in Jenin city. Doctors at al-Razi hospital said a man bled to death on its doorstep after soldiers prevented medics from retrieving his body.

A burst of machine-gun fire from a helicopter gunship in a residential neighbourhood of Jenin on Wednesday killed a young man, who was outside charging up his mobile phone on a car battery, and injured Rina Zaid, 15, in the chest.

All but one ambulance driver from Jenin's general hospital has been arrested by the Israeli army, so her family ripped a door off its hinges and carried her to hospital on foot.

At dusk last night, the refugee camp was hit by 10 explosions in the space of an hour - a parting act of destruction as the Israeli army "mops up" what it calls an infrastructure of terror operating from inside.

A new wave of refugees streamed out of the camp - including many children - scavenging for food. A few hours earlier, Riyad Ghalib Damaj, 28, a produce seller, also smuggled himself out with a group of women and children fleeing the camp, taking advantage of a brief lifting of the curfew in Jenin.

"There are no houses left in the refugee camp; there is only a highway. There are countless numbers of houses destroyed. If you saw them you would go crazy," he said.

"So many rockets were fired on our house from helicopters because three soldiers were killed nearby, and there are only two families left in the neighbourhood."